Some weeks taste better than others
Fresh marshmallows, finding inspiration from a $4 food truck and a UNESCO recognised rēwena bread.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter produced in partnership with Boring Oat Milk. Written by me, Charlotte Muru-Lanning. It’s lovely to have you here!
Occasionally, at the end of this newsletter, I include a little write up of a meal that stood out for me over the last seven days. While some weeks it’s a struggle to feel inspired by anything I’ve eaten, this week I couldn’t choose just one – too many deserved a mention. Perhaps it’s somewhat reflective of the world at the moment that there can be such discord between the quality of what I eat week to week. Some weeks will be absolute snooze-fests (or I’ll be doing seven days of isolation), others can feel like every meal I encounter is otherworldly. Breaking with tradition, here are some beautiful things I’ve eaten since the last newsletter.
A medley of shatteringly crunchy vegetable tempura from Ten-hana: The tempura here is, in my humble opinion, the best in Auckland, but the weirdo in me is probably even more drawn to the fact it’s served in a wonderfully liminal space between the top floor of a near deserted mall and a hotel lobby in central Auckland.
A marshmallow, fresh from the icing sugar bowl while I paid at the till: My boyfriend and I took the train to the new Avondale cafe Burnt Butter over the weekend for smoked kahawai pikelets and filter coffee (we spotted some Boring oat milk on site too). It’s everything I want from a cafe, and I’m jealous there’s nothing like it in my suburb – being given a spontaneous cloud-like marshmallow at the end sealed the deal.
A room service club sandwich from a fancy hotel: Club sandwiches are ordinarily a pretty good time, but delivered to a hotel room on a tray and under a cloche lid? The best thing you’ve ever eaten. I’d love to know the psychology behind why hotel breakfasts and hotel room service are so mesmerizing. Something I do know is a lesson I learnt in my early 20s: make sure your clothes are on before you take a picture of that reflective dome lid and post it to your Instagram.
Sometimes boring is nice.
Keep an eye out for the launch of something special from Boring and Parrotdog. Coming soon.
Don’t like surprises but do like oat milk? Head to boringmilk.com for an untapped supply of New Zealand made oat milk straight from the source. Check the box that says 'Subscription' and save 10%
Weekly bites
Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen who is of Tainui (Ngāti Mahanga), Taranaki, Chinese (Guangdong) and Pākehā descent wrote an essay on kūmara which was republished on The Spinoff. Starting with her own memories of intertwining her heritage through her nan’s boil up featuring kūmara and bok choy, she goes on to describe how the kūmara straddles both the sacred and the everyday. I found the stories of alignment between understandings of the kūmara in Aotearoa and China fascinating.
Dunedin Bowling Club sells wholesome meals from its food truck daily for just $4. In this piece on The Spinoff, owner Liam Arthur explains how the food truck he launched with his partner Jackie is part of a broader vision to make our food systems work in our favour by eating as a community rather than an individual. While these types of shared approaches already exist, especially in Māori and Pasifika food norms, I found it a pretty convincing and inspiring argument for the expansive potential of communal food economies.
Liam Arthur outside Dunedin Bowling Club (Photo: Supplied) After 34 years in Australian and New Zealand lunchboxes, Le Snaks are le gone. Falling sales are to blame for the discontinuation of the product, Stuff reported last week. Au revoir!
Food waste has increased since last year, according to Rabobank-Kiwi Harvest Food Waste Research, which surveyed 1,509 people about their food habits. Fifty-three percent of people said they had chucked out unopened food in the last year – up from 42% last year. The estimated percentage of food waste per household has risen to 13.4% – up from 8.6%. With food waste increasing alongside inflation, the estimated value of food waste per household has risen to $1,520 a year – which means New Zealanders are tossing about $3.1b worth of kai in the bin each year. It’s an excellent reminder to have a fridge forage.
It’s always a good time to embrace those abandoned ingredients in your fridge and pantry. (Images: supplied)
Despite increasing concerns over a global food crisis, and calls from campaigners to prioritise grain for food instead of using it as a fuel, the US will go ahead with biofuels production using grain, reports the Guardian. It’s a complicated issue, with some arguing that biofuels could help to reduce the need for fossil fuels. Plus, many US farmers benefit from biofuel production – removing or reducing that market would be controversial. At the same time, numerous developing countries are facing widespread hunger, and rising food prices.
Chaha-Chapati (that is, hot chapati dunked into a cup of sweet, milky tea) is a breakfast staple in Maharashtra, a state in western India. Food writer Pradnya Waghule explores the complicated history, along with the impact of a changing society on the dish in food writing journal Goya.
A vital message from The Spinoff’s publisher, Duncan Greive:
If you’re reading this, you’re hopefully getting value out of The Spinoff. Yet like many publishers, we’ve suffered a significant drop in members, despite our costs continuing to increase. On one level I understand why our membership has dropped away. As the cost of living has reached new heights and the pandemic has become less of an urgent news event and more of a part of day-to-day life, it’s totally normal to feel like you don’t need to support your local media organisation.
The promise we’re making to you is that we’re actually better suited to times like this than the pandemic itself. Of course we will continue to write about Covid-19 and the many effects it’s having on society, but our plan now is to return to something more of what made us, which is coverage of culture, politics, business, te ao Māori and more with heart and humour.
But we can’t do it without you. We need your support more than we ever have. So please, if you can, click here to support The Spinoff by becoming a member today.
An interview with rēwena bread baker George Jackson
On the counter of George Jackson’s rēwena shop in Whanganui, his nan’s camp oven sits in pride of place. He grew up eating bread his grandmother made in the pot and now, Jackson (Te Ātihanuinui-a-Pāpārangi) sells the bread made from a potato starter passed down from his great-grandmother, to his nan and eventually to him. Last week, his rēwena was recognised by UNESCO as part of their venture to promote the traditions and cultures of bread making. Loaves of rēwena can take around 15 hours to make from start to finish, but really each loaf conjures up a much wider time scale – representing an intergenerational transmission of knowledge. This week, I had a chat with Jackson about the responsibility of looking after his rēwena starter and whether the bread could be as ubiquitous in New Zealand as the baguette is in France.
When did you start making bread?
I've been doing this mission for about eight years. Before that, I was a courier driver. Now, I look after my kids and tend to the shop.
Do you sell anything else at your shop?
My idea was to just make rēwena bread, but when I opened the shop I found that I had to get a bit more inventive just to get a bit of money flowing through the business so I started making hāngi using my leftover rewena bread to make stuffing, and I make some fry bread too.
What makes rēwena bread special?
Well, what makes it special for me is that's what we were brought up with. It's what my nan made when we were young. Lot of people have fond memories of being served her rēwena – it would always be there on the bench to eat.
Maintaining that whakapapa through food, through the taste of your grandmother’s cooking is pretty cool!
Yep, it's the same starter that she used when we were kids and then I ended up with it. So I ended up with some and it was kind of an honour to get to use that. If you told me 20 years ago that I would be doing this, I probably would have disagreed with you, hard out. I didn't think I'd be doing this. When my nan passed 26 years ago, I'd kind of forgotten about the bread. I started making my own for my kids who are now nine and 11. I basically made it for them so they could experience what we experienced when we were little. They know the bread now alright, they call it dad's bread.
What’s it like looking after a starter passed down from your great-grandmother?
It's a responsibility, it's a living organism, so you've got to look after it, you've got to feed it. Feed it, use it. Feed it, use it – it loves that. If you're a bit half-pie about it, it's going to give you half-pie bread. It's got to be used consistently. If your bug is healthy, you'll have healthy-looking bread. It's a full time job.
The bug I have is my great grandmother's and I’m honoured to be using that. It's got mana, it's got history. So I wouldn't use any other. It's a good one. But every baker has their own techniques. It's pretty hard to replicate the same bread. Even though my nan made it, I couldn't make one that looked exactly like hers. I have my own style, as long as the taste is there it's all good.
It can be pretty hard to find kai Māori in shops. Could rēwena in New Zealand be like baguettes in France?
That's my mission, to supply supermarkets, Four Squares, Pak'nSaves with my rēwena.
Talk next week!
Hei kōnā mai, Charlotte